Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Sagar Bapat "New and Hot" (Week 2)

This article from www.evolutionnews.org talks about a book review in an upcoming issue of American Scientist that challenges Darwinian reductionism. I think it is interesting to see how Darwin's framework, while widely accepted in the academic community, is still not infallible and leaves much room for debate.

Dupré fears that Rosenberg’s adherence to strict physicalist reductionism (“Darwinian Reductionism”), where “everything is ultimately determined by what happens at the physical level—and that this entails that the mind is ‘nothing but’ the brain,” is based upon a failure to understand why most philosophers of biology have abandoned such reductionism rather than a new revelation. As Dupré points out, most philosophers have abandoned this view because, among other reasons, genes have a “many/many” relationship with phenotype.

More specifically, his [Rosenberg’s] portrayal of the genome as a program directing development, which is the centerpiece of his reductionist account of biology, discloses a failure to appreciate the complex two-way interactions between the genome and its molecular environment that molecular biologists have been elaborating for the past several decades.

Dupré excoriates Rosenberg for thinking of natural selection as an actual physical law rather than mere differential death. (Natural selection is, of course, the latter and much more akin to the "Stuff Happens" bumper sticker on the TV version of Forrest Gump.) Finally, Dupré also goes after Rosenberg for thinking “genes literally embody a program that produces development,” for seemingly adhering to the notion that 95% of DNA is “mere junk,” and for not keeping very current on molecular biology. For more, see the rest of Dupré’s excellent but tough review “Is Biology Reducible to the Laws of Physics?”

Also here is the link for my review of Darwin's autobiography on Amazon: here